


Fate of the Dice

by ZenzaoDLP



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Challenge Response, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 08:46:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4515459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZenzaoDLP/pseuds/ZenzaoDLP
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Third Hokage takes a handful of genin under his wing as students once more, and while they fail to meet his standard for the Chunin Exams months later, their mettle will be tested when disaster strikes the village.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fate of the Dice

Naruto slurped up the last noodles in his on-the-go bowl from Ichiraku's as he entered the Academy, well and truly happy. It wasn't often that the Old Man wanted him for something, since the incident with the Shadow Clone no Jutsu, and here he was being called up - with pointed politeness, no less, no gruff ANBU shadowing his footsteps the whole while.  
  
"Oh, it's you. Up the stairs."  
  
Naruto gave the secretary the stink eye as he passed. Typical stupid villager attitude, always looking down on him, like some kind of filthy animal. _Well screw her_ , he thought. _The Hokage wants me for something, so take that!_  
  
"Old Man Hokage!" he greeted boisterously as he ascended the steps. "What-" he trailed off uncertainly at the looks of the Inuzuka boy and the girl from the flower shop, already present, when he appeared.  
  
"Ya gotta be kiddin' me," Kiba muttered. Ino sighed. Naruto squinted and crossed his arms.  
  
"What the hell are you two doing here?" he changed tact.  
  
The Hokage rolled his hat off and clopped it to the desktop irately, getting the three wayward Academy students' attention. "Naruto, that is hardly any way to respond to your fellow teammates." He lit his pipe with a flare of hand seals so quick that Naruto couldn't even comprehend them, just a whoosh and the next thing the Hokage was puffing away.  
  
In typical Naruto fashion, the young shinobi-to-be asked, just as loudly as he'd begun upon entering the room, "Whaddya mean teammates?"  
  
"Like it was our choice in the matter to be partnered up with you," Ino stated scathingly. Then she turned and bowed in contrition. "Sorry, Lord Hokage. But couldn't we really pick someone else?" She brightened considerably. "Someone like Sasuke!"  
  
Naruto growled in outrage, the first in what would inevitably build to a storm of insults and, in time, mischief. Kiba scoffed. The Third leveled his pipe at each of the children in turn, staring hard.  
  
"Life will rarely accommodate the preferences we would choose, miss Yamanaka. Try to show more enthusiasm; and that goes for all of you, Naruto." Naruto shut his trap reluctantly. "Now come, sit down. I have called you three together because I see in you the makings of a worthy successor of my previous team. Under my own direct guidance, Team Sarutobi shall begin preparations for the Chuunin Exams in the months ahead. And I expect to see a fully functional cohesion between each of you, covering for flaws and heightening strengths, by the time your names are eligible for nomination."  
  


  
[Dice]  


A disparaging exhalation met their first training period's close.

"Ninjutsu, taijutsu, genjutsu, all staples of our ninja arts, and all deplorable at this level." The Third sat his log puffing on another pipe, turning a crucial eye over his pupils. "Naruto, while I commend your capacity for the Shadow Clone Jutsu, on its own it is undisciplined; mass rushing is futile if they lack the fighting skills to back it up." Naruto panted on the ground a few feet away, unable to have left a single scratch upon the Hokage's hat, let alone his person.

"Kiba, your partnership with Akamaru is well founded, but you suffer from the opposite flaw; your charge is too firmly telegraphed in advance. You require more patience, the subtlety before you act." He and Akamaru nodded wearily. "And you are also lacking coordination with Naruto."

"And miss Ino." There was practically no need to expand upon her failings. She slumped in complete exhaustion, having failed to hold with her family's famed skills. "You lack the stamina to uphold your talents despite reacting with well placed timing."

"So… what can we… do about it, Old Man?" Naruto bit out as he pushed up on one arm to match his disappointed stare.

"Do, indeed." The Third thought on the subject for several moments. "I will acquire training aids to further your undeveloped prowess. In the meanwhile, you three shall start coordinating your spare training sessions together and working to increase each others lacking areas of the ninja arts."

[Dice]  


At the start of their fourth session the Hokage brought out swords. Tantō's, in truth. "I have decided that, of all your diverse fields, only kenjutsu is well suited as a middle-ground between them, be it ninjutsu, taijutsu, and yes, even genjutsu, rare though that application may be."

Naruto swung his around experimentally, getting a feel of the balance. A widening smile lit his features. It was moderately heavy, more so than a handful of kunai, but bright orange like his jumpsuit, and it _felt_ right in his hands. He always liked the thought of stabbing, for some reason.

_And_ , he thought, it would make reaching the Hokage's hat that much easier in their next attempt.

But oh, how wrong he was on that count. How very, _very_ wrong. After a refresher course on how to handle deadly blades without slitting one's own wrist in the process, the Third proceeded to swat them down with his pipe aglow in chakra, and yet another grueling lesson in the ways of the shinobi began being drilled into Team Sarutobi one awful day at a time.

[Dice]  


After the first month, the term _genin_ actually deserved to be used in reference toward his students. Rust scraped off of skills barely acquired to begin with beyond the crudest rudiments, and a fine polish set into place in the burgeon field of swordsmanship, the Third Hokage sat back toward the end of their latest bout with an inkling of pride in the middle of his stern gaze.

"Old Man, how much longer before we start going out on _real_ missions?" Naruto, as ever, complained first and foremost even as he darted in with two dozen clones, some few of which were, despite the odds, a camouflaged Kiba and Akamaru. Ino sat off to the side nursing a bruised wrist; of course, the moment he let his guard down, feigning interest in the discussion, she lunged into motion the same as they.

A few moments later three sore genin and a young pup lay scattered to the four winds. At the least they had lasted those precious seconds, which was more than could be said for the average Academy student.

"Very well. By the middle of the following month, if Team Sarutobi continues to improve at this pace, I shall dedicate a mission beyond Konoha. But!" He spared Naruto's suddenly hopeful face a measured look. "You of all will need to take this mission seriously, Naruto."

Naruto shuffled to his feet. "No problem-dattebayo!"

[Dice]  


"An escort mission!?"

The Third leveled a withering stare.

"I mean… an escort mission? I thought we'd be doing something awesome, like uh, fighting off enemy ninja, or hunting after dangerous animals or somethin'. Ya know, a cool mission."

"Naruto, if we went about performing solely extermination missions Konoha would soon enter a shortage of means. And while I have grown confident in your prowess as a team, I will _not_ see your lives jeopardized simply for the sake of 'coolness'. It is this or nothing at all until the Chuunin Exams."

Kiba yanked the blond boy aside. "Shuddup a minute and listen! Iwa is gonna be more than rough enough to satisfy our interest in putting these blades to good use. The Fourth is the only reason Iwa hasn't been on our asses since the end of the last war!"

And that was all that was needed. Naruto did not exactly grin, but he showed a renewed determination in the days leading up to their departure.

"So who're escorting around?"

"A scroll merchant."

Naruto groaned.  


  
[Dice]  


Naruto plucked a rock from the bottom of his sandals. Flicked it out amidst all the other forsaken rocks in this part of the shinobi nations, watched it roll to a mullish stop, and sighed. His tantō hung at his hip, undrawn. Kiba at least had Akamaru for muttered conversation, and the Third had the merchant to speak with, leaving the two blonds alone at the rear of the convoy, and while he'd amused himself with a Shadow Clone for a time, he was getting sick of being in his own head the whole while.

"So, uh, Ino." She brushed back her shoulder-length hair with cursory interest. They weren't the best partners, but by kami and the Third's ruthless regiment standard, they had grown used to each other remarkably well. "How's your hand healing?"

She rolled the bandaged limb at the wrist, flexing her digits about afterward. "Better every day."

_Well, that's all I've got,_ he thought afterward. There just wasn't much to talk about out here, and Kiba's insistence to the contrary five days earlier had proven incredibly wrong. _If only_ _there was something to do besides pluck at rocks!_

No one had ever told him not to taunt fate. The boulder up ahead exploded into fragments, and like a ring of exploding tags, the ground followed suit all around them.

When the dust and shards settled, twenty Iwa nin surrounded the convoy.

The scroll merchant screamed.

"Defend yourself," the Third ordered his students.

Naruto grinned widely. "Awright!"

A horde of clones filled the environment, each carrying a drawn orange tantō. Naruto, Kiba, Akamaru and Ino grouped up together as the resource that just kept giving spawned two and three dozen more infantry to disrupt the enemy shinobi forces. One Iwa-nin went down with ten puncture wounds bleeding horrifically. The others began demolishing the Screamin' Orange Horde in calculated maneuvers after that, once the initial shock wore off, working inward faster than even Naruto could pump out a body count.

"Now what, genius?" Kiba and Akamaru squared off to tackle the first Iwa-nin that burst up from around their ankles, slicing and biting by turns. Naruto kicked the hitai-ate off the next as Ino temporarily paralyzed the foe and drove his momentarily re-sheathed, and then redrawn, tantō down into the unprotected flesh beneath, as the Inuzuka's finished their opponent off as well.

But with only three of the opposition eliminated, and seventeen still in good health despite the rare mark from a clone, the situation did not favor their odds of survival.

The Third righted that matter with the end of a rigid pole. Just as two months earlier, lighting his pipe so quickly that Naruto could not even read the hand seals, so too did the Hokage move like the wind in striking down each remaining Iwa-nin that closed in on them, smashing the bodies to the ground only to fling them skyward the next instant in a blur of precision. In a handful of beats sixteen men came crashing to the hard land, unconscious.

The last, the commander of the strike team, watched from a measured distance. "Iwa remembers," he bit out hotly, and before the stretching staff could reach him, the man leveled the earth upwards beneath their feet and the wagon where the Third and the merchant stood, and then he was gone underground.

In the aftermath of the surprise assault, the Third sent his walking, talking staff to finish bringing the scroll merchant on into Iwa proper, and issued a return to Konoha for the rest of them while the evening hours still burned red on the horizon. Naruto complained loudly about being sent home without seeing the mission through to its completion, but he quelled soon enough before the Third's stare.

"'least we got to use our kenjutsu sommat," he muttered under his breath to his teammates. Kiba was less enthused, but it was Ino who seemed to be downright shaken by her contributions in the act of death. Naruto could, for once, sympathize. Mizuki's demise had not been a pleasant introduction to the real side of the ninja arts awaiting them down the road.

They reached the gates of Konoha by sunrise of the second morning following the incident. Unknown to his students, the Third Hokage had sat watch while they slept fitfully each time they bedded down for the night, thoughts too full to sleep even had he not been intent on seeing Team Sarutobi returned to Konoha safely.

[Dice]  


When they arrived for yet another training session under the Hokage, the three of them were greeted with an unfamiliar face. "Yo," the Jōnin said mildly. "Lord Hokage is currently unable to continue his training sessions as your sensei. In point of fact, all of the team sensei's will be unavailable for the near future as we draw toward the Chuunin Exams."

Naruto frowned. "So what do we do in the meanwhile?"

"What else? Train. There's no guarantee anyone will be nominated."

And on that ominous note, one week later, the same Jōnin came around to break the news; "Sorry to say it, but Lord Hokage can not in good faith nominate Team Sarutobi for this year's Chuunin Exams. Better luck next time."

A cold stone sank down Naruto's gullet and settled into place amidst his ramen noodles. Kiba and Akamaru pitched a fit, complaining about the man hours spent working together for nothing this year, while Ino rolled her eyes and left without a word.

"But… but we worked so hard!" Naruto finally said to the silver haired man. "We even fought off those Iwa shinobi! The Old Man's been drilling us fiercely for over two months! What more does he want?"

The Jōnin stared at him with a curious expression. "Sometimes your skill and dedication just aren't enough to cut it, kid. Lord Hokage's decision is final. There's always next year."

[Dice]  


Naruto sat the balcony beside the other genin to fail their sensei's standard, a mixed collection of mostly Konoha- with a few Suna- and Kiri-nin, and almost no Iwa. The lone trio of the rare other village, like the Sound, huddled off on their own, but by and large, the collective misery of those who hadn't even had the chance to take the written exam, let alone participate in the battle exhibitions, saw the band of misfits rally together in their woes.

Below, Sasuke, of course, because who else but the prestigious bastard of the Uchiha clan, was fighting another genin from Suna and holding his own against the barrage of sand attacks.

Naruto squinted at his Academy rival and secretly hoped to see him beaten to a bloody pulp, but what were the odds of _that_ actually happening? So far, slim to none. Red eyes aglow, Sasuke was countering every attack thrown his way, and landing a handful of his own in retribution.

After twenty minutes Naruto gave up and stood up, working back from the crowd into the rest of the Academy and then into the village center. _I could really go for about ten bowls of Teuchi's tastiest, spiciest ramen right now,_ he lamented. _I'll even settle for the fish roe ramen._

He never got the chance.

The village lit up like a bonfire, as throughout, ten infiltrators set into motion Konoha's destruction and the taking of the hidden beasts pooled together.

"Naruto!" Ino was the first to reach him after the explosions stopped, finding the other blond half buried in a pile of debris. Naruto grunted as he crawled out from beneath a shattered wall, bleeding from half a dozen small but irritable wounds. He wiped a torn sleeve across his brow and held his arm there to stem the flow from reaching his eyes.

"Oh kami, Naruto, it's awful! We need to find Kiba!"

"What the hell happened?"

"I don't know!"

A man stepped out from the shadows behind them, an older, harrowed, sterner copy of Sasuke. Naruto stared at him blankly, briefly wondering how the bastard had grown over a foot and when did his Sharingan start bleeding from the tear ducts, when the longest three days of the young ninja's life came crashing down upon him in a reign of horrible fire and memories of torture, the Iwa battle gone catastrophically wrong.

Ino screamed when her teammate collapsed bonelessly, shivering, to the ground. When the darker Sasuke turned his bleeding gaze upon her she hit him with all the oomph of her _Shintenshin no Jutsu_ \- and for all of the one moment that she had insight into that man's mind before being repelled, the purpose behind the assault appeared, and she knew, fighting not to black out the next moments, that she would never see Naruto again if she fainted.

She struggled back to her own feet and drew her tantō, angling the blade to face his awful eyes rather than look back at them directly.

It was then, with a sound of curious chirping, that the real Sasuke burst onto the scene in a howl of rage. Lightning smote the ground where the darker copy had stood, and Ino circled around to Naruto's side, desperately prodding at him.

Blue eyes stared back at her blankly. He was beyond her help, only the help of himself.

Or the raging beast roaring inside of his gut.

[Dice]  


A red rage washed out the black horror, a bubbling malice that crept up and coiled around the fracturing pieces of Naruto's battered psyche. He groaned unintelligibly as that hatred squeezed into the cracks and began gluing his mind back together with fire and wroth. _What…_ he tried his first coherent thought since watching his own clones turn upon him, and his teammates, at what he had seen them do to Ino and Kiba and Akamaru, at what the Iwa-nin had done to her… over and over again… _what is… this?_

A distant noise rippled through the haze of memories, shaking their hold.

Naruto blinked and rolled over weakly. The earth underneath his body shook, and a scream lit the air, one he was well familiarized to by now, automatically snapping his gaze over to where Ino had fallen to her knees beside him, tantō scattered to the ground. He followed her sight ahead, expecting to see Kiba, the Third, or even the merchant, but instead seeing Sasuke, the darker, harder Sasuke, holding the Sasuke he knew and loathed by the throat.

"Still trash. Several years and you are just a boy playing at being a shinobi. You would have been better off with the rest of the Clan." Dismissing the furious genin and throwing him through a wall, the dark copy turned back to Naruto and Ino.

"As for you, girl. A brave attempt warrants a quick death."

Naruto groaned. He rolled onto his stomach and puked up every ramen noodle he had ever eaten in his lifetime, feeling the red rage building up again. _I won't… I won't watch her die again…_

Unbeknownst to him, Naruto's flesh began to boil and peel, and dark vermillion chakra bled up to the surface. At the base of his spine a single wispy tail formed and raked at the ground. Faux claws extended from his fingertips, gouging at the earth underneath his body. The whisker marks over his cheeks darkened.

"As expected of the Nine Tails," dark Sasuke stated dryly as he moved in to incapacitate Naruto instead.

Naruto spun and threw himself at the older shinobi, filmy eyes half-blind with fury and chakra and blood. He felt a dull nail pounding at his thoughts as the same genjutsu tried to shred down to his battered mind, and then they were tangling, the enemy nin stepping back rapidly after only a moment, and a terrible fireball exploded in Naruto's face, further blinding him - for the moment.

He howled and launched toward the scent of the man, chakra tail lashing out.

Ino sat helplessly on the ground, terrified. A war had fallen upon Konoha, and erupted scant feet away. And something truly awful had awoken within her teammate. All she could do was fight to stay awake and not die in the aftermath of the clash taking place.

The real Sasuke crawled from his own rubble on shaking limbs. Lightning skittered across the ground as he tried to form his attack from numb fingers.

From the nearby hot springs the older nin drew forth water and materialized a dragon, driving the rippling creation into Naruto's charge, and stopping the genin in his tracks. He was smashed flat. Immediately on the heels came another fireball, a series of them one after the other, bombarding him.

_I won't… watch her die again!_ He thought through the physical anguish. A second tail crawled out from beneath the first as his second skin grew denser, hotter, bubbling more and more in conjunction with the rising inferno of agony.

Sasuke threw what he could of his gathered lightning. The enemy shinobi flung a sword to intercept it in mid-air without looking and took to collecting it again without ever touching the water flooding the area now, throwing his momentum toward Naruto in what would be a killing stroke.

And then the clang of adamantine shattered the lesser blade and flung that man back. The Hokage's staff, soaring down from the sky, drove Naruto flat and smashed his consciousness black. Then it transformed. A great monkey, old and armored, took the place of the staff, one foot planted to Naruto's shaggy blond head.

"Girl, take him and run. Run to your house and hide."

Ino gathered what remained of her strength to stumble upright and over to her badly burned teammate laying in a filling crater. He stank of charred flesh and hair, tracksuit burned through in a dozen holes, and he felt so heavy she almost dropped him then and there. The monkey thrust a smaller staff from thin air toward her, and a diminutive clone helped take Naruto's burden as they fled.

"I cannot allow you to interfere," the enemy nin stated quietly.

"I'd like to see you try and stop me, boy," the monkey answered. The next moment he was at the Uchiha's throat, eyes gone behind a partial transformation.

[Dice]  


It was a day that lasted a week. A day that never seemed to end. And then, when it had, the village was in shambles, and the Hokage, though successful in driving away the brunt of the threat, had given his own life to see that victory through. Two of the enemy shinobi had been captured, and three more killed.

When Naruto awoke, it was to confusion, anger, crippling pain, and sadness. Ino and Kiba were there with him, in the hospital. Or what was left of it.

"Hey."

"Oh thank kami, you're awake."

Naruto winched as she embraced him tight enough to make his ribs creak. "Don't you ever be so stupid again!" she said the next moment, pulling back to glare at him through a row of tears.

Kiba sniffed the air and made a face. "Damn, still smells like fox in here."

"I don't… what happened?"

Both of his teammates exchanged unwary glances, and when they parted gazes it was to stare at the floor, downtrodden. "Sensei… Lord Hokage, that is… he's dead."

_No._ Naruto stopped breathing momentarily. "Whaddya mean the Old Man's dead? He can't be dead! He's the Old Man!"

Kiba growled. "You idiot! You've been asleep for a week while we've had to sit here and lament his passing by ourselves! The whole village is in an uproar over the attack and his passing to put a stop to it, with the other 'kages. So shuddup."

Naruto struggled to roll out of bed and collapsed instead on his side, gasping. "He can't.. he can't have died, we're his students… we're supposed to learn more... supposed to… supposed to earn his approval… for the Chuunin Exams…" a wave of tears blurred his vision and he fought through the pain to swipe at them angrily.

"He died like the Fourth." Another voice broke in softly. The three of them turned to look at the man walking in, the Jōnin from some time earlier in the month. The man who had been there, instead of the Hokage, to tell them that they had not been nominated. They hadn't even had the chance to formally, as a team, say goodbye to the Hokage. He hadn't had the time to speak to them.

But what set Naruto off was seeing the man wearing the Hokage's hat.

Naruto screamed and ranted at him for several seconds until his breath ran out, then, gasping down another scorched lungful, he began anew. The man bore the outpouring of grief, rage, and anguish, until, at last, Naruto finished with, "-so don't you come in here wearing that hat and making mockery of our sensei again!"

Ino was staring at him agape, horrified, and Kiba wide-eyed. Then the Inuzaka broke out in a fit of rough laughter. "Holy crap, you're gonna be in it deep after this."

"Are you through?" Naruto could only glare at the man, ignoring his teammates' reactions. "Good. Starting today I am taking over as your team sensei. The Third knew what he was doing when he picked you three for his last team."

"Who the hell're you?"

"Godaime Hokage Hatake Kakashi. I'll expect a shrivel more respect than this going forward, but I'll give you all time to grieve and heal before enforcing that. Particularly you, Naruto."

Despite how it pained him, Naruto grit his teeth and sat up, and reached over to the table to draw his tantō. "The Third had this made just for me. For all of us." He pointed at the others' nearby short swords hanging off their bodies. "Unless you're taking up his pipe too, you'll need something-"

The Fifth produced a moonlight white sword of his own. "-like this," he finished for the genin. "You'll find that I am just as well-versed in kenjutsu as any man still alive in the Land of Fire."

Naruto scowled.

"We're holding the funeral in one more week. Rest up enough and you can attend it with the rest of Team Sarutobi, Naruto."

END…?

**Author's Note:**

> Response to BTT's Roll your own Naruto fanfic! thread on my home site. Essentially roll 9 dice, match them to the corresponding 1-6 in each category for what happens, and write a story from the results.
> 
> Actual dice rolls for those interested.  
> First roll for male teammate: 5: Kiba.  
> Second roll for female teammate: 2: Ino.  
> Third roll for sensei: 1: The Third Hokage.  
> Fourth roll for specialty: 5: Kenjutsu.  
> Fifth roll for first 'real' mission destination: 3: Near Iwa.  
> Sixth roll for mission type of the above: 4: Bodyguard.  
> Seventh roll for Chunin Exam difficulty and location: 6: Not nominated for the exam in Konoha. Better luck next year!  
> Eighth roll for Chunin Exam disaster/results: 6: Akatsuki attack.  
> Ninth roll for Fifth Hokage: 3: Kakashi.
> 
> Was it unrealistic to think that One-tails!Blind rage!Naruto might not be immediately subdued and taken away by Itachi? Perhaps. And what happened to Kiba? How, and why, did Sasuke turn up instead? Kiba and Akamaru likely got dragged into fighting the Sound trio with some of the other nearby students, while Sasuke was thrown about by Shukaku!Gaara and wound up catching sight of Itachi, thus his abrupt change of target and intrusion in that fight. 
> 
> I hope this was worth your time to read. Thank you.


End file.
